Ben Sasse warns about male loneliness, effects of 'incredibly stupid' school system on boys

By Jon Brown, Christian Post Reporter Friday, June 05, 2026

Former Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., recently emphasized the importance of male friendship and warned of the negative effects the school system is having on young men facing economic upheaval.

Speaking during a roughly 90-minute interview on Tuesday at The Trinity Forum in Washington, D.C., Sasse suggested Americans are facing a crisis of friendship, citing statistics that show the number of people who report having no close friends has quadrupled since 1990.

Sasse, who is suffering from Stage 4 pancreatic cancer, expressed gratitude for the circle of enduring male friendships that he has maintained since his youth, but noted such bonds are becoming increasingly difficult to form.

Ben Sasse on the real key to sustaining deep friendships among young men.

This is gold.

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— Caleb Anderson (@AndersonCa4775) June 3, 2026

"I think it's pretty obvious that when you work alongside someone in a shared task, in a shared cause, the chances that you get to become good friends are a lot better than something that is merely a discretionary consumption choice, 'should we do this one hobby together occasionally?'" he said.

"There's no thickness that binds you together like something that feels more foxhole-ish, because you really needed each other. So the richer we get, the stranger it will be to have lasting friendships."

Sasse observed that many people are also delaying marriage and family formation until later in life, which he said means "one deep friendship doesn't happen for a lot of people until a lot longer later, or never."

"But it also becomes a model for friendship that you don't get to have when you [are] 18 or 20, or 22 years old. And it's a lot harder to form these things later than earlier," he said.

Sasse cited a study by Harvard professor Arthur C. Brooks, who found that "60% of 60-year-old men say their best friend is their wife, 30% of their wives say their best friend is their husband."

Such a statistic, Sasse said, is "super tragic in a world where you're unlikely to have the experiences again at 40, or 45, or 50, or 55 years old that you got to have at 18, or 20, or 22 years old."

"And what's obvious in that data is that women are better than men, on average, at forming new friendships when disruption occurs. And men are much less good, on average, at forming new friendships when disruption occurs. And we're entering a world where disruption is going to be ubiquitous," he added.

Sasse spoke of the other struggles boys and young men are facing, suggesting that they are being ill-prepared by a modern school system built for a factory economy that no longer exists.

"I have been thinking a lot about the institutionalization of childhood. And I think it's pretty bad overall, but I think it's obviously bad for the vast majority of boys. The idea that you should be inside, sitting still on passive receive mode for the vast majority of the waking hours every day, I just think is incredibly stupid," he said.

The passivity and compliance that were useful for a factory worker are no longer helpful in the emerging digital age that rewards the creative and self-motivated, said Sasse, who noted that the economy is rapidly changing and that many jobs will be replaced by artificial intelligence.

"I think we're going to look back on this moment and wonder why we assumed that the passivity was possibly going to produce entrepreneurial, self-motivated workers who could navigate the disrupted economy of the post-digital revolution," he said.

"And we're going to know that we did this for way, way too long. And we should be encouraging more self-ownership, autodidacticism and entrepreneurial disruption among 12- and 14- and 16- and 18-year-olds and especially 14- and 16- and 18-year-old boys," he said.

Sasse has given a number of interviews since his terminal cancer diagnosis last December, during which he has repeatedly warned that a largely elderly Congress is seemingly incapable of addressing the issues attending the digital revolution.

Speaking with "60 Minutes" in April, Sasse warned that the U.S. is undergoing economic and technological revolutions that are "unsettling culture and place," which he said is leading to problems that can only be solved by maintaining close personal relationships and communities.